


Her Heart

by greenlightdaya



Series: Almost, Maine AU [1]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Confused Peter Parker, F/M, Falling In Love, Light Angst, Mentioned May Parker (Spider-Man), Michelle Jones Needs a Hug, Minor Character Death, POV Michelle Jones, Soft Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24076183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenlightdaya/pseuds/greenlightdaya
Summary: Welcome to Almost, Maine, a town that doesn't actually exist, and is so far north it's almost in Canada. The people of Almost are ordinary, and are also dealing with the toughest thing there is to deal with: love. One night Michelle decides to travel to Almost all the way from Queens to see the Northern lights, when her peace and quiet is disturbed by Peter, the person whose yard she happens to be camping in.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Series: Almost, Maine AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1737004
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	Her Heart

**Author's Note:**

> this is an AU based on the play Almost, Maine by John Cariani, so this may turn into a series of scenes from the play, none of which will be related to each other since there can't be more than one Peter or Michelle haha. 
> 
> you don't need to be familiar with the play to understand the story, but it's a great play if you would like to read it or watch the scenes on YouTube you should! enjoy, friends!

Michelle stares up at the night sky of Maine, clutching the paper bag that hasn’t left her arms in 3 days, and it’s nothing like the familiar sky of Queens. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen so many stars in her life. She feels so far from her life back home, like she’s at the edge of the world, and despite the freezing wind and snow, she feels somewhat at peace. 

Of course this peace is inevitably disturbed. She hears careful footsteps approaching from behind her and she spins around to find a short young man in a robe and slippers approaching her. 

“Hello,” he says to her. 

“Um, hi,” she replies. She turns back to face away from him, hoping that if she just ignores him he’ll leave her alone.

“I thought I saw someone, I was about to go to bed then I saw you from my window… is there something I can do for you?” the man asks. 

Michelle sighs, not wanting to explain herself but feeling she really has no choice. “Nope, just here to see the northern lights.” She turns away from him again, clutching her bag tighter to her chest. 

“Okay, it’s just… it’s really late and you’re kind of in my yard, are you-”

“Listen, man,” she interrupts him then turns to face him, “I’m just here to see the lights, then I’ll be gone.”

“Um, is that your tent?” The man asks hesitantly, pointing in front of her to her small but practical campsite. In a different circumstance this would be sort of hilarious, but this guy is really starting to bother her. 

“Yup.” She replies.

“You pitched a tent… in my yard?” 

“So I can sleep after I see the lights.” 

“In my yard…”

“Aren’t people from Maine supposed to be accommodating for travelers and hikers?” Michelle retorts, hoping that will shut him up. Instead, he laughs and replies,

“Where did you hear that?”

“I read it in your brochure,” she takes out the tourist brochure she snagged at a rest stop from her backpack and opens to the first page, pointing him to the quote. 

“It says people from Maine are different, they live life the way life should be, and that they even let strangers camp out in their backyards,” she reads to him.

He seems pretty amused, which was not what she was going for, hoping this would get him to finally leave her be but he just replies, “Wow, you’re very prepared.”

She scoffs, brushing off his sarcasm. Then relents, realizing she’s maybe been a bit too short with this guy, when, she admits, she has been camping in his backyard. She hopes if she explains herself then this guy will get the idea and call it a night:

“Okay, so, I’ve been hiking all day trying to find the perfect spot to see the lights. I’m freezing and hungry and my legs are sore, so if you could just let me stay in your yard until the lights are here, then I promise I’ll get out of your hair, I would really appreciate it,” Michelle is surprised to hear herself finally let some of her guard down, but she blames it on the exhaustion and mild hypothermia for her choice of words.

“Yeah, sure, go ahead, I was mainly messing with you,” he replies, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone hiking in my backyard, I guess I was just curious?” 

“Thanks.” She replies. Silence falls over them then, she turns back to face the sky, disappointed she hasn’t seen any lights yet, and wondering if the man is going to head back to his house when he blurts, 

“You know… Maine is the only state that’s attached to only one other state?” 

“Um, cool.” She says. He sighs then, and silence falls over them again. He walks up to stand next to her, about 6 feet away, not sure if it’s better that she can see him out of the corner of her eye as she looks up at the sky or not. She finally breaks the minute-long silence, “I’ve never been this far north before.” 

“Oh, cool,” He replies.

“It’s kind of, like being at the edge of the world.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, smiling at her declaration when she thought what she said made no sense as soon as it left her mouth. He turns his head, getting a better look at her, and notices the brown paper bag she’s clutching tightly in her hands.

“So… what’s in the bag?” He asks her. Michelle really was trying to be nice before, and even though his brown eyes are kind and his big cheeks are rosy from the wind, she feels like he doesn’t get to ask her this.

“Nothing,” she retorts somewhat harshly, but she hopes this will get him to leave the bag out of the conversation. 

“Right,” he agrees, looking up at the sky, she watches him for a second, seeing him lost in the sky for a moment, he turns to her, and they lock eyes before she turns back to the sky, ignoring the feeling of his gaze still on her. 

“You know,” the man starts, “you might not see them tonight.”

“The lights?” She asks, “No, I’ll see them,” This she is sure of, she has to see them tonight.

“Well, I just mean, you never really know-”

She interrupts him, “They’ll be here because I’m in a really good place, the latitude is good, and solar activity is at an eleven-year peak, plus, the sky is just… it’s a good sky, so, I’ll see them.” Michelle realizes she sounds like a control freak, but there’s no way she’s not seeing these lights tonight, no matter what this stranger says. 

He nods at her, letting her have this moment, and then says,   
“This used to be a potato farm,” gesturing to the wide and frozen landscape around them. 

She looks around, “Yeah, it’s all flat here, no trees blocking the sky, that’s why I picked it as my spot.” 

Michelle’s still wondering why this guy hasn’t said goodnight and left her alone yet, but she finds she doesn’t mind his company too much, for the past few days she’s been alone with her thoughts in an unfamiliar state, and it’s then that she realizes that this is the first person from Maine she’s met since she started her journey to see the northern lights. 

“So,” she asks him, turning to see his face, “you’re a farmer then?”

“Oh, no, I’m a repairman,” he replies, then he leans slightly towards her, “I fix things.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” she replies, wondering why he thought adding in that last bit would be necessary. Then she laughs to herself a bit.

“What?” He asks her, his face lighting up, she notices that he’s taken a step closer to her. 

“So, you’re not a lobsterman?” She asks him, she knows it’s a weird question, but whatever.

“Huh?” He asks, slightly confused.

“You don’t catch lobsters or something?” She presses. He shakes his head, forming a tight-lipped smile, Michelle tells herself that she did not notice the crinkles around his eyes as he did so. 

“Huh, I guess I thought that everyone from Maine fished for lobsters, and had funny accents, but you don’t talk that way,” she doesn’t know why she’s sharing her preconceived notions of Maine to this guy, but then he lets out a laugh, closing his eyes and clutching his stomach, she ignores again the crinkles in his eyes. 

“No, that’s more Down East, this is pretty much how we talk up north,” he assures her, smiling at her, “plus,” he continues, “the ocean’s a few hundred miles away, that’d be a pretty long trip to work every day if I was a lobsterman.” 

Michelle meets his eyes again, and sees he’s smiling at her, she returns the smile, seeing his smile grow bigger, then she quickly looks up at the sky, still no lights in sight. 

“By the way,” Michelle asks him, “where exactly is here? I couldn’t find it on my map.”

“Um… Almost.” The man answers

“Excuse me?” 

“You’re in unorganized territory, Township thirteen, Range seven,” Michelle fishes in her bag for her map, “it’s not gonna be on your map,” the man says, “Almost isn’t actually a real town.”

“What do you mean, exactly?” she asks.

“Well, to be a town, you gotta get organized, and I guess we never got around to getting organized, so we’re just Almost.” 

Michelle finds this weird, but it also feels cool to know she’s not even in a real place right now. “That’s actually kind of nice,” she replies. He meets her eyes yet again, he seems to like seeing her be appreciative of his non-town, rather than confused.

“Yeah, well, anyways,” she interrupts their moment, “thanks for letting me stay here. It’s been kind of a rough couple of days so-” the young man starts to lean into her then, she turns to face him, and realizes his face is about 6 inches from hers. She pushes him away and jumps back, startled by his sudden movement, and wondering exactly what he was trying to pull just then. 

“What the fuck?” Michelle yells at him, because she knows he did not just try to do what she thinks he just tried to do. 

“I’m sorry, um, I just, I uh,” he stammers, face heating up as Michelle internally shakes her head at the audacity of this guy, “I think I love you?” 

Michelle was not expecting this, of all the things that could have come out of his mouth, she least expected him to say that. 

“Really? You love me?” She asks him. She doesn’t know what to say, because she’s never had some random repairman declare his love for her in the middle of a frozen field at nearly 11 pm. 

“Yeah, I uh, I saw you from my window and-” he scratches his head nervously then fidgets with his hands when she notices that he has her paper bag in his hands. Her breath catches in her throat and she starts breathing rapidly, panicking. He must have somehow gotten the bag into his arms when she pushed him away before that almost… moment. 

She points at the bag he’s clutching rather tightly. “Give that back,” she demands with a shaky breath, trying her best to stay calm.

The man gives her a confused look.

“THE BAG, GIVE IT TO ME RIGHT NOW!” She’s trying not to seem too crazy but she really needs her bag back. He looks down and realizes he’s holding her paper bag, seemingly also unaware he had snatched it from her. He quickly hands her back the bag, Michelle finally taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, clutching it to her chest. 

“Look, I’m really sorry about what just happened-” the man starts but Michelle interrupts him, 

“Just so you know, I’m not here for… that.” He seems confused, not understanding what she’s insinuating, then it seems to click.

“For- oh, of course- I didn’t think you were, I’m sorry, I don’t know-” he continues to stammer until she interrupts:

“I’m here to pay my respects.”

“Oh?” He asks, confused once again.

“To my husband…” Michelle finishes. This gets him to freeze. He looks at her, but it’s still this warm and kind look as if he can somehow understand the hell that she’s been through, and she hates that after what he just tried to do that he still has the audacity to look at her so affectionately. 

“Yeah, my husband, Harry, he died recently, on Tuesday actually, so I came to pay my respects.” He looks down and scratches his head again, a movement he seems to like to resort to when he knows he’s fucked up, then he looks up at her, and she feels like she should just continue. 

“Yeah, the northern lights, I read that they’re really the torches that the recently departed carry with them so they can find their way to heaven, and it takes three days for a soul to reach heaven, and this is Friday, the third day, so, he’ll be there, he has to be.” She finishes her spiel about the lights, she knows it’s… unconventional to travel all the way from Queens to Almost, Maine just to see some lights, but she wanted to, so she did.

The man nods like he knows what she’s talking about, “Yeah,” he says, “my Aunt May told me about them, we came to see them when…” he trails off, but Michelle understands what he’s trying to say, he’s lost someone too, maybe not as recently as her, but she can see it in his face. 

For some reason she keeps going, sharing more with this man than is really necessary: “I didn’t leave things well with Harry, so I was hoping to come here and say goodbye to him,” then she starts to feel angry at this guy, realizing he really has ruined this important moment for her, and instead of grieving Harry, she’s explaining her life problems to a stranger who definitely tried to kiss her a moment ago, “but what you did just then, it bothered me, so, I think I should go.” Michelle turns to face away from him, starting towards her tent, surprised to feel her throat feeling tight, a sign she’s on the verge of tears. 

“No!” the man blurts, “wait- I don’t know what just happened.”

Michelle doesn’t turn around, getting farther from him with each step, and yells, “Well I do!” Michelle can hear the man’s footsteps, but he’s not exactly chasing her, just staying within earshot of her. 

“I’m not the kind of person who just does stuff like that. Please, don’t go- just, do what you need to do, I won’t bother you. Maybe just… consider what I did a very warm Maine welcome.”

She has to stop herself from smiling at that last part, but she’s still not 100% okay with what just happened, but on the other hand he did seem really sorry. She stops and turns towards him, he stops too, a respectful distance still between them. She doesn’t say anything just squints at him, trying to understand him.

“My name’s Peter,” he says, it’s then that she realizes she’s been talking to this guy for 10 minutes and she hadn’t known his name until now. 

“Michelle.” 

“Michelle, I’m really sorry, I won’t do it again.” He apologizes, and Michelle decides to let this go because the lights should be here any minute and she’s too tired to find another campsite, not because the thought of kissing him now that she noticed his long windswept hair seemed kind of nice and warm in this cold air, not that at all.

She just nods at him, giving him a tight-lipped smile, and he shoots one back. It was almost a nice moment until he had to ask again,

“So… what’s in your bag that was so important.” Michelle could tell it was an innocent asking, but knowing what the answer was made it feel like a very personal question to be asking someone whose name he’d just learned. 

But Michelle decided to tell Peter the truth, feeling that he wasn’t going to stop asking, and she couldn’t think of an answer that made sense, and she was tired and cold, and it definitely wasn’t because he was starting to warm up to her or anything like that. 

“Well… it’s actually my heart.” Once the sentence comes out she knows she’s made a mistake, because any sane person would immediately run in the other direction right? Her heart? How could she just tell him that?

Peter does seem confused, but then he says, “So that’s why it was so heavy,” then he nods and sends her a kind look with his eyes, and she continues with her story.

“Harry broke it.” She says, worried that this is going to sound as crazy as to him as it does to her, but he’s still listening.

“He went away… with someone else.” She finds her throat getting tight again, but she pushes it down. Michelle knows she hasn’t properly processed everything that’s happened with Harry, her life has changed so fast and so drastically in these last few days and now she’s in Maine, talking to Peter the kind repairman from a town that doesn’t actually exist.

“When he did that… I felt like my heart was breaking, and that’s exactly what was happening. It broke: hardened up and cracked in two. It hurt so badly I had to go to the hospital and they told me they had to take it out, and when they did they dropped it on the floor and it broke into nineteen little pieces… slate.” She shakes the bag, showing him just how hard and broken her heart is. 

Peter nods again, absorbing her bizarre but completely true story, then says, “Great for roofing,” when he sees this doesn’t amuse Michelle too much he quickly asks, “so how do you breathe then if your heart’s in that bag?” 

Michelle touches her chest, indicating to her new heart and says, “artificial.” 

“Really,” Peter says, at the same time fascinated and concerned for her, then asks, “Then why do you carry it around with you?” He points to the paper bag again.

“Because it’s my heart.”

“But it’s broken”

“Yeah?”

“Because your husband left you?” Michelle nods. 

“Well… why are you paying your respects to your husband if he left you?” He asks.

Michelle is more than a bit offended to hear him ask this, “because that’s what you do when a person dies, you pay your respects.”

“But he left you-”

“Yes,” Michelle replies.

“-And it seems to me that if someone leaves you they don’t deserve any respects.”

“Well,” she deflects, “I didn’t leave things right with him, and I wanted to have some closure-”

“What do you mean?” Peter asks.

“-And I need to apologize to him.” Michelle continues. 

“But he left you!” Peter emphasizes, as if this is news to Michelle, “why should you apologize?”

Michelle feels overwhelmed by all of his questions, she knows her situation is very strange, but Peter’s need to know what her obsession is with paying her respects to Harry causes her to say something she hasn’t even admitted to herself yet:

“Because I killed him.” This finally shuts Peter up. “And I’d like to apologize.” 

“Oh.” Is all he can muster.

“He came to visit me in the hospital after I got my new heart, I was almost better- and he said he wanted me back, and I said “Harry, I have a new heart now, it doesn’t want you back,” and that just killed him.”

Peter lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Oh, okay, but it didn’t kill him, you didn’t actually kill him.” 

Michelle shakes her head, not able to stop the feeling in her throat causing an obvious strain and shaking in her voice, “No, I did because he got so sad that my new heart didn’t want him back that he just tore out of the hospital, and… an ambulance that was coming in didn’t see him, and it just took him right out, and if I had just been able to take him back-”

“Michelle…” Peter says with a soft voice, his eyes trying to find hers but she just stares at her freezing hands that are holding her broken heart. 

“-then he wouldn’t have torn out of there, so I just feel that… for closure, the best thing to do is to just, say goodbye, and that I’m sorry.” 

Peter walks towards Michelle slowly and embraces her in a hug. At first she wants to pull away. But the warmth coming from his body, and his arms around her back, makes her feel okay, so she slowly wraps her arms around his back, her neck resting on his shoulder. She breathes him in, and when she finally pulls away he gives her this look, a dangerous look, a look she’s too afraid to accept is actually real. 

“Don’t.” She says to him, but she doesn’t pull back, still close to his face. 

“What?” He asks carefully.

“I… I won’t be able to love you back. I have a heart that can pump blood and that’s all. The one that does the other stuff is broken. It doesn’t work anymore.” 

Peter shakes his head, and gently lifts the bag from her hands, his body still so close to her. “Please let me have this,” he says.

Michelle shakes her head, lost for words, and confused about what he could possibly want with her broken heart. 

“I can fix it, I’m a repairman, I fix things.” He smiles then, and she can’t help but give him a smile back. She feels his breath on him, and he feels so warm next to him, his face so kind, so understanding despite everything she’s just laid on him, and not only is giving her this understanding look, but he’s holding her heart, wanting to fix it. 

She leans in slowly, Peter tensing for a second, then leans into her as well before she kisses him, soft at first, the feeling of his cold lips against hers surprising her. He brings a hand to her cheek, both his face and his hand so cold that she can’t tell if that’s why she shivers at his touch, or another reason. She twirls her fingers through his hair, just about to run her tongue on his bottom lip when she feels him stop.

She opens her eyes, but he’s not looking at her, which catches her off guard at first, but then she turns and follows his eyes, seeing what he’s seeing. 

The northern lights have appeared, and they’re a thing of wonder. Deep blues and purples and bright greens shift and wave across the star-filled sky, almost as if they’re alive. It’s like nothing she’s seen in videos or could have imagined when reading about them, this is something else, and she leans into Peter, taking his hand. 

“Goodbye Harry,” she says to the sky, hoping that he’s up there, carrying his torch, hearing her words. She turns to Peter then, and he breaks his gaze on the sky to gaze at her, “Hello Peter.”

**Author's Note:**

> ahhh this is my first ever time writing fanfic let alone posting on ao3! thank you so much for reading, if you’d like to let me know what you thought that would be <3, and if you would like me to post more spideychelle almost, Maine scenes, also let me know, I have lots of ideas :).


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